All Law Gazette articles in Archive – Page 1234
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Movers and shakers
Staff from the Manchester office of national firm Simpson Millar are setting out once again to prove that big is beautiful – if it not necessarily fast. They are donning sumo suits to wobble along the tarmac in the 10k Bupa Great Manchester Run on 17 May, to raise £2,000 ...
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Sentencing
Imprisonment for public protection – Indecent photographs of children – Risk of re-offending R v Robert Lwellyn Hicks: CA (Crim Div) (Lord Justice Thomas, Mr Justice Blake, Mr Justice Burnett): 21 April 2009 ...
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Susskind, Mayson and Hodgart urge firms to plan for the future
If I were a lawyer faced with planning the future of my business at the same time as carrying out my day job, I think I’d feel exhausted, bewildered and not a little terrified.
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More management speak, anyone?
This week I met up with an experienced entrepreneur and business man, a fellow who had started his own company some years ago and was clearly successful and making money; nothing to do with law. We were talking about business generally and got into profit ratios, business in hand (we ...
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FSA says it will target City professionals in insider dealing fight
City professionals are a priority target for the Financial Services Authority in its battle against insider dealing, the watchdog said this week. The FSA has begun insider dealing prosecutions against two lawyers who had worked in the London offices of US law firms. According to court papers, Andrew Rimmington, formerly ...
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Law Society of Scotland 60th anniversary conference: Susskind fires private equity warning
Private equity firms are stepping up their interest in English legal practices as they search for lucrative investment opportunities in a difficult market, according to Professor Richard Susskind, author of The End of Lawyers? However, the legal services futurologist warned that law firm owners hoping to ...
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Brought to account
Obiter, who blushes to reclaim a receipted taxi fare, has watched with awed fascination the Daily Telegraph’s exposure of how MPs have worked parliament’s expenses regime. Justice ministers are among those in the spotlight. Justice secretary Jack Straw, ...
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Bar considers action on ‘threat’ posed by solicitor-advocates
The Bar Council has set up a working group to tackle what it calls unfair competition from solicitor-advocates for Crown Court work.
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France sets out agenda for OLC
Improving consumer confidence in the legal profession will be high on the agenda of the first chair of the Office for Legal Complaints, Elizabeth France, as work starts on how the organisation will be run. ‘Change is needed to improve confidence in the system,’ France ...
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Jumping ahead
Guy Barnett, managing partner of Midlands firm Blakemores, won the show jumping Welsh Masters Championship 2009 – despite being on his second string horse, a Danish Holsteiner called Aragon (pictured). Apparently his first choice, Joli Coeur, suffered an ‘unlucky rub’ in an earlier round. Barnett, appropriately, specialises in equine law.
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Home working – the antidote to swine flu?
Does it have to take a pandemic or a disaster to make more of home working? Swine flu is a scary thing. No one wants to take any chances with it and some employers are imposing an unofficial quarantine on employees who have recently returned from Mexico.
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QC appointment review rejects proposals for radical change
The former head of the Queen’s Counsel selection panel has rejected Law Society proposals that would have increased the number of solicitors eligible to apply. In a report published last week, Sir Duncan Nichol said that widening access to the current award ‘would run a serious ...
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Don’t complain that you haven’t been warned
Let’s be honest, no one likes to receive complaints, though some businesses like to burnish their consumer-friendly credentials by pretending that they do. What matters though, ultimately, is how you deal with them.
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Best value tendering will drive firms out of business, say lawyers
Criminal practitioners have slammed the Legal Services Commission’s ‘reckless’ plans to test best value tendering, saying they will force many firms in the pilot areas out of business. The LSC is consulting on proposals to test the new method of commissioning services in police stations and ...
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Bids for nuclear development sites, mining rights and property sales
Going nuclear: Magic circle firm Freshfields advised energy company E.ON on its successful bid for nuclear development sites in Oldbury and Wylfa. E.ON, alongside joint venture partner RWE, acquired the land at a Nuclear Decommissioning Authority auction, where three sites were sold for ...
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Who’s calling the regulation shots now? The Legal Services Board
In setting out its views on the regulation of alternative business structures (ABSs) yesterday, the Legal Services Board signalled its willingness to override approved regulators if they don’t get their act together quickly.
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LSB consults on regulation of new business structures
The Legal Services Board today stressed its determination to sanction alternative business structures by mid-2011, as it launched a discussion paper on how they will be regulated. The board said it will directly license ABSs if the approved regulators do not seek to become licensing authorities. ...
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New guidance for child care and supervision cases
The Ministry of Justice is drawing up new guidelines to help local authority lawyers tackle problems faced during child care cases. The Gazette has learned that new guidance is intended to make the Public Law Outline (PLO), introduced in April last year, more effective and ...
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SharePoint can provide firms with high-end tech for low-end cash
There is a software company that owns solicitors’ desktops. It has the lion’s share of their company email too, and now it wants the rest of their IT business. Microsoft is a brand that needs little introduction, but it is making inroads into areas of law firm IT which were ...
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Chancery Lane steps in to help run migrant lawyer programmes
The Law Society is to help law firms run internship and secondment programmes that were threatened by new immigration rules by launching a scheme for migrant lawyers under Tier 5 (T5) of the points-based system (PBS). As the overarching body for the scheme, the Society will ...